What are far more important in our lives are life transitions. We don’t have any tradition for this in the western culture. We have to look to what we would describe as primitive tribes to find rituals that represent life transitions. These tribes are not necessarily primitive; they are just different. They have rituals for various life stage transitions and a typical ritual for this is “from childhood to adulthood”.

The only transitional ritual of any importance we have left is probably when we pass away and the funeral associated with that. This is of course a good thing, but it is late.

Does this mean that in the western culture there are no transitions? No, not at all, but they are mostly unintentional and not directed at all. Many would benefit from daring to go actively into this kind of processes. That would also free us from some changes that “just happen”, at least that is how we perceive it.  By directing it we take control of our lives, our development and will get a much richer life from it.

Can there anyway be transitional processes that we will influence us barely by being part of the society? Definitely.
Many would say that USA over the past three decades or so has gone through a transition, more than one probably, and some for the better and some for the worse. Some intentional and some unintentional.

President Barack Obama talked about change during his presidential campaign. You cannot change a country or a society just like that. The new president represented a change, it is situational, and he can implement some new parameters that in themselves are changes, and (hopefully) will lead to transitions.

We don’t need more change, we need…., that’s correct.

•    Control Your Thoughts
When you concentrate and focus on something, you give it energy. Your will is the instrument that focuses your energy. If you want your dreams to grow, you must nourish them with positive energy. This takes will and determination. You have to use your intellectual faculties so as to not be affected or influenced by the outside world. Other people will always share their opinions with you on every matter, whether they are knowledgeable on the topic or not.
Family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, radio, TV, and newspapers will all compete for your attention, eagerly throwing opinions in your face. It’s your responsibility to be confident, in having discovered your purpose, to withstand such distractions. When you take control of your thoughts during these times, you develop the will to stay on course. You have to be able to weed through the negative and corrosive influences of such things that will endlessly attempt to prevent you from reaching your goals.

•    Stay True to Yourself
Your will is a strong and capable force. Remember to use it inwards and not outwards. This means that you do not want to develop a bad habit of trying to use your willpower to force others to do what you want them to do. Just as you have your own course, they have their own course. You must respect this. The key to your success lies in what you do and not on what you can get others to do. You do not want to be in the business of manipulation.
Wallace T. Wattles has written about this in his book The Science of Getting Rich (Wattles 1910). The premise is that in order to get what you want, to live on purpose and to gain a fulfilling life, it is important to understand that you do not have to apply power or force toward any other person in the process. Your success is not contingent upon how much pressure you can apply to others or upon how readily you can reshape others’ views, opinions, or actions. Your success is dependent upon you and your actions. You are responsible for your own future. In fact, forcing others to do things only tends to defeat your own purpose.

•    Be Future Oriented
In the pursuit of your goals, in trying to accomplish your mission, always look ahead. You aren’t going to have much of a chance marching into the future toward your goal if you are doing it while constantly looking backward. “Let the dead bury the dead” is an oft-used expression that actually originates in scripture. While you can interpret this saying many different ways, in this context, the point is to go forward and do what you can about improving your future.
You cannot do anything about your past, so you should concentrate on pursuing your purpose into the future. In order to keep looking forward, you have to focus. Use your will. Whether you are happy with your past or not, you cannot change it. Concentrate your efforts on those things that you can change. If you focus on the past, you are taking valuable resources away from your efforts toward fulfilling your purpose and making a better future.

•    Define Your Own Success
There is only one person that can define success: you. This is not a competition, and there is no benchmark. Benchmarking is more often used as a way to level the playing field. It is not helpful to you. You want to set goals, but there is no reason for you to measure your success in comparison to what others are doing or achieving. Your success is defined and determined by you and you alone. When a company sets a benchmark, what they are inadvertently doing is imposing limitations by setting a restrictive realm on what is possible based on what has been done before. You need to set your sights on your purpose, vision, and goals. The parameters as defined by others should not be of major concern to you.
Become an expert in your field as defined by you. Success is entirely an internal matter. If you have set a goal, and you are on your way to achieving that goal, then you are on your way to success. You should be happy when others are successful, when they achieve success according to their definition. Again, this is not a competition. There is no shortage of success to be had in this world. It is not a scenario where if someone else succeeds, it lessens your chances for success. One person’s success is no more or less valuable than anyone else’s success. There is equal validity to everyone’s specific goals.

•    Stay Committed
Internalize your goals. If you have not fallen passionately in love with your goals or your ideas, then you will not develop the necessary will to achieve your dreams. You must be committed. If you are not committed to your purpose, then what chance do you have of breaking through the barriers that will inevitably block your path? There will be very strong forces that will work against you. Expect it. Many of these forces will come from within you. You are in control, but you must have a strong will and strength of mind to withstand the barrage of resistance that will come your way. Without a strong will and a depth of purpose, this is a battle that you are destined to lose. A strong will is essential to overcoming the obstacles and challenges that you will most certainly encounter along the way.

Be Willing to Attain Success
When your will to reach a goal has reached the highest levels, you can find a way to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles that might be in your way. You are capable of extraordinary things and can reach a level of accomplishment and fulfillment that you might have previously never even thought possible. Sticking to your goals, and having the will necessary to keep you on the path to greatness, is the key ingredient that separates those that actually live a life of fulfillment from those that only talk about it.

JP

At the prospect of venturing out beyond your comfort zone, the terror barrier swells like a storm. This happens because you feel threatened. As is the case with all storms, some will dissipate and die away, while others will continue to build into a hurricane, a powerful force capable of much damage and destruction. The problem with the terror barrier lies in the fact that it inflicts damage in whatever form it takes, no matter the level of force. As occurs with relentless waves hitting the shore, even if the force is relatively minor, the long-term weathering impact will slowly erode your dreams of living a life of fulfillment—if you decide to let it, that is.

Sometimes, it is like hitting a wall with a BANG! Other times, you are gently lulled into submission until you decide to finally give up on your vision for good. Either way, the terror barrier exists and can have a damaging and lasting effect on your life. So,what is actually happening? As it is most of us live our entire lives in our comfort zones, that place in which you feel the most safe and secure. Now notice I didn’t say the place in which you feel the most happy. The vast majority of people will endure a life of unhappiness and unrest simply because they are comfortable with it, because it’s what they know. This is an unfortunate, but all too often adopted, approach. And usually this stems from conditioning according to the norm and is the reason why it is so important to break out of the norm or conventional wisdom if you like.

Oftentimes, people just change jobs. However, they are not truly addressing the source of their problems; thus, they find themselves in this perpetual state of unrest. They go from one uncomfortable and unfulfilling situation to the next. I have set up my business, Quantum Leaps Consulting, to help positive and motivated people, as individuals or in a corporate environment, turn potential into performance. Again, you have to be willing to do what it takes, but you can most certainly make changes in your life for the better.

Have you ever seen one of those people that can chop through a stack of boards, ice, or concrete with their bare hands or even their forehead? Well, the keys to this task are belief, will, and commitment. If they were not willing to go all out, they would not generate enough force to break through the surfaces, thereby releasing the resistance and avoiding serious injury. Now these people have undergone a great deal of training, and I am not recommending that you set up blocks of ice in your garage and start head-butting them to impress your neighbors. I am using this as a metaphor to demonstrate that you must fully commit to what you want and only then will you have the necessary force to carry you through and achieve your goals.

JP

It seems like most businesses like to stay mainstream. They might have started up as a unique idea, but once others enter the market everybody seem to adjust to each other, more concerned with not standing out, than actually doing so.

Next level leadership is about daring to stand out. Getting out of that comfort zone that the benchmarking level is all about.
We know the market, we know the customers, and the competitors, we look back when we set goals for the future, we only do things we know how to do, and know that we can. This is a good place to be, we experience it as safe, and it is right out comfortable. And it can be for a while, at least as long as everything is on an upward swing. Because as long as you choose to be mainstream you will go with the flow as long as the flow goes. If, on the other hand, you choose to stand out, you will keep going in spite of everybody else stopping.

That is truly a nice place to be. So why do so few businesses go for it? Because it takes a bit to get there, and this is where most of us back out. We hate to admit it, but whether we are sales people, middle or even top management, we don’t like to challenge the unknown. That is hitting the terror barrier. Admitting you’re afraid of something is regarded as a weakness, so you keep quiet.
We do not like to do something that is new to us, which we do not quite know how to solve. We are more concerned with doing things right than doing the right things, the things that actually can give us an advantage over the others in the market place. Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried something new.

Remember this; the Wright brothers had no pilot’s license. Edison did not know he was going to illuminate the world. You see – great accomplishments have never been based on how. If you’re going to set goals you know how to achieve – you’re going to have to always lower the bar.

Don’t be so afraid of failing. Failing is a good thing, start promoting it! That is good leadership. If nobody fails in achieving goals, the goals are too low. Michelangelo says: “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark”.

John Maxwell says it is important to fail forward, fail forward into growth. By doing so you naturally bring your business forward, because every time you fail, get up again and keep going, you move forward. And every time you hit the terror barrier and break through it you advance to a new level, and if you advance, your business does.

JP

When you have taken the time to zero-in on what you want out of life, every choice you make, large or small, will be geared toward helping you achieve your goals. If you have not created a clear image in your mind of what you want, you will find yourself incapable of making quick and informed choices. Or worse, you will make uninformed choicess that, unbeknownst to you at the time, will have negative repercussions that won’t be realized until much further down the road. You might have difficulty recovering from these choices, as they will take you in a direction that requires more time and effort to get you back on track.

Now there are things that can be gained in life from making mistakes, and I can assure you that we all make them and will continue to make more of them as we go. I am not talking about a fear of making an unrecoverable mistake. First, you can always recover, and you will be richer for the experience. However, also realize {that I am pointing out} that if you are not aware of what you want, you will find yourself roaming around aimlessly. Not knowing what you want, or being under the impression that wanting anything at all is being unrealistic, will greatly increase your chances of failure. One very common and important factor that both can and most probably will make you indecisive, is circumstance. You might be saying: “What’s the use? Why bother?” You might actually find yourself so overwhelmed that you have effectively rendered yourself incapable of making the choices that, if made properly, would enhance your life greatly. Do not become a victim of such thinking. Envision, plan, and take action.

JPA

There are plenty of people of privilege who throw away all of their advantages and fall into a life of poverty and discontent. These are the individuals that make the decision to stay locked behind their terror barrier. They have not been able to overcome this obstacle and get out of their comfort zone and make the most of the gifts they have been given. We all have specials skills and talents that help determine our purpose in life. What we need to do in order to unleash these gifts to the world is to face and conquer our fears. The terror barrier is a threshold that we must learn to cross if we are to get ourselves on the path toward a life of fulfillment.

We stay in our comfort zone, because it is safe, it is familiar, and it is naturally comfortable. If you think about it, just how comfortable can you remain before you start to have negative consequences, before it actually hurts you tremendously? It is not surprising that we carry on this way and take refuge in our comfort zone if you consider the fact that we are conditioned to think along these lines from childhood. We are molded from uniqueness into conformity at a very early age and tend to go through life on automatic pilot. Yes, this might be comfortable, but it is also a very unfulfilling way to live.

There are a large number of people that are unwilling to undergo even the remotest amount of pain in pursuit of a goal. I would argue that this approach, in the long run, is more dangerous, as it results in even greater pain later on. Experiencing a bit of pain as you branch out is not only normal, but also a good motivator to get you up and going. Pain will often lead to growth and development. You are probably familiar with the expression “to light a fire” under someone. Well, this has become cliché, but the reality is that many of us need to turn up the heat a little bit in order to set the wheels of change in motion.

The Animal level of awareness centers on your fight or flight response.  This is an instinct that is in response to external stimulus.  There is not a whole lot of thinking involved here, or none at all actually.  You are relying on your physical senses.  You are reacting rather than responding.  You may do it in a more elegant way than an animal, but you experience the same basic animal reaction to things.  If your natural reaction to any sort of resistance is to cower and quickly relieve the tension by compromising your ideas, this will have a prolonged effect on your well being.

Let’s take a scenario of turning your annual salary into your monthly salary.  You think:  “Wow, that would be fantastic!  What a great idea.”  So the first thing you do is you go to your spouse and explain your idea.  Your spouse likes it and you feel relieved.  You weren’t too sure about this new idea that you had been toying with so you feel as though you’ve dodged a bullet by getting an initial positive reaction.  “That’s great, my spouse supports me.”  Well, then as you are telling your wonderful new idea to a friend, you notice a skeptical look come over his or her face, which becomes more cynical as you continue.  Your enthusiasm in now beginning to wane and by the time you are done talking, you are starting to doubt yourself.  The anticipated first words of their response come in the form of a sarcastically delivered: “Good luck with that.”  Now you are thinking:  “Well yeah, it was probably a silly idea anyway.”  And so you back off and you lock that dream away and go back to doing the same old thing.  What you have just experienced is a flight response to criticism.  The first sign of difficulty and you fled.

But if you believe in your ability and you believe in the possibilities of life, there is no reason why you cannot achieve this goal.  Your reaction was an automatic interpretation that happened instantaneously, without you having to think about it.  If you had your ideas and beliefs rooted strongly, and you were instinctively willing to defend your ideas, your reaction would have been to fight.  I don’t mean you would have taken a swing at your friend for daring to disagree with you, I mean you would have fought for your idea by sticking to it and putting it into action.  There are certainly instances where your flight instinct will be right, but by realizing the possibilities for you in this life, you will not so quickly discount things that although they may be difficult to achieve, are in fact entirely achievable and definitely worth pursuing.

The second level of awareness is called Mass.  This means not really thinking and just blindly following the crowd.  You are born into this world as a unique individual, but raised into conformity.  The moment you become aware of the value of your uniqueness, is the moment you can bring value and great things into this world.  We have touched on this notion previously, but it certainly bears repeating.  If you let others decide your future, you will likely only realize an average future.  The people that are willing to let their unique ideas flourish in this society are the people that lead the most fulfilling lives.  Do not be so quick to let what is the most popular idea and the most agreed upon solution be your guide.

Mark Twain poignantly scribed in a notebook that, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.”  Or in this unsent letter to a friend, “When you set aside mere names and come down to realities, you find that we are ruled by a king just as other absolute monarchies are.  His name is the majority.  He is mighty in bulk and strength…he rules by the right of possessing less money and less brains and more ignorance than the other competitor for the throne, the minority.  Ours is an absolute monarchy.”  Mark Twain, the brilliant writer and consummate thinker, had a way of colorfully illustrating a point, which could not be more evident in the context of the majority as we relate it to the mass level of awareness.

Aspiration is the third level of awareness.  We are speaking of the desire to be, to do and to have more—but never do!  Desire without action.  In this category we find forever dreamers.  They dream and yet their dreams are never internalized to the point where they translate them into action.  Remember when you were in school and rather than paying attention to your teacher’s lesson on the branches of government, you were staring out at the nearby football field and dreaming of playing in front of thousands of screaming fans someday?  Suddenly, your teacher snapped you back into reality:  “Stop daydreaming and pay attention!”  While I can appreciate the frustration of your teacher in trying to educate you while you were off in another place, there is nothing wrong with having dreams.

Daydreaming, however, automatically seems to suggest that there is no reality attached to your thoughts.  Well, for most people that certainly holds true.  How do you turn your passion into prosperity?  Action!  You must get the wheels in motion and realize that without action, you have no positive results.  Make no mistake, you will get results without action.  Just not the results you had intended or that you desire.  There are positive results and there are negative results, but they are results just the same.  It starts with a thought, but action is the key ingredient that turns your vision into tangible positive results and a life of fulfillment.

The next level of awareness is Individual, where you start to express your uniqueness.  There is only one of you with your specific potential. Your potential is unlimited, but is also specific to you.  Someone else has a differing unlimited potential specific to them.  Realizing this fact is where the breakout starts to form.  Remember the conscious mind and the subconscious mind?  Well, this is where you begin to use your conscious mind, your thinking mind.  Here is where you begin to question the present.  “Is this all there is?”  This is where you start wondering what you want in your life.  “Wouldn’t it be great if…?”  Right now your life may be on automatic pilot.  You may be just going through the motions.  The same routine, day in and day out.  And you begin thinking:  “Is this how it should be?”  Well the moment you realize that you are unique, that your unique thoughts and contributions are essential to this world, is the moment that you can begin to achieve great things.

Discipline is the fifth level of awareness.  In this case, we are not talking about a form of conditioning or punishment.  We are concentrating on the ability to focus on your goal despite distractions and competing influences.  You must use your will to keep out the distractions.  And when someone or something knocks you down, get right back up.  Keep moving forward.  Keep growing.  Follow through.  I don’t know to whom this quote can be first attributed, but remember, “God’s delays are not God’s denials.”  You must be focused and disciplined in your approach, but do not give up because the road is not always smooth and easy to navigate.  You are going to encounter some rough terrain once in awhile, expect it, but your ability to show discipline in the face of inconvenient and difficult circumstances will set you apart.  You always have room to analyze your situation as you go along, and interpret your results, but staying disciplined will enable you to gain momentum and avoid being thrown off course, or coming to a screeching halt.

The sixth level of awareness is the all-important Experience.  There is a substantial difference between learning and experience, studying and doing, and preparing and executing.  To learn something is often to be based in theory, while to gain experience is to have acquired real world applications.  Let’s say I was to tell you that it gets hot in the summer in Phoenix, Arizona.  You could appreciate this fact and be able to understand that the temperatures in that area exceed those in other areas.  Okay.  Fine. Now compare that to having actually gone to Phoenix in August when the temperature was 117 degrees.  When you come out of your air conditioned hotel room in the morning, you are hit with a blast of air that makes you squint and makes you stop in your tracks.  When you get to your car, the door handle is so hot it literally burns your hand.  Your flight home is delayed because it’s so hot that all of the planes are grounded.  So, when you call your spouse to explain that you will be home late because it’s hot in Phoenix, which party do you think has a more in depth understanding of the temperature in Phoenix?  That’s experience.

When it comes to life, there is no substitute for experience.  Getting involved, taking action and taking part in this world is an exciting, valuable and fantastic journey.  You can be book-smart and there is nothing wrong with extensive study, but you have to get out there and experience life.  You can do all the preparation in the world, but as important as preparation is, you have to make things happen. Experience is a tremendous way to improve your overall awareness.  As you experience things, you will see new opportunities that had been previously hidden.  Learning to apply experience will set you apart and take you further in your quest for a life of fulfillment.

The last level of awareness is called Mastery.  This is the point at which you truly begin to respond.  You are no longer controlled by habit.  You have mastered your paradigms.  You use your intellectual faculties to control your thoughts, and thereby your actions, and ultimately your results.  This is what you are striving for.  Mastery of your mind is the way in which you will be able to reach the pinnacle of life.  When you finally are able to overcome your fears, you will quickly begin to see signs of progress toward your goals.  Your subconscious mind will not be filled with doubt, but with optimism and possibility.

Everyone has bills to pay. It would be foolish to disregard any realities associated with money, and there is nothing wrong with wanting to improve your bottom line and to seek a measure of material wealth. This does not make you a bad person. The danger is when you become so obsessed with material things that you steam roll over every other aspect of your life. Having a balanced life that includes a combination of wealth, in all other areas, will give you a level of satisfaction and fulfillment for which money alone can never substitute.

Money, taken by itself, will only serve to amplify your personality as it currently exists. If you are a good person, then adding more money to the equation will make you capable of doing that much more good. If, on the other hand, you have sinister or unseemly motives, this will unfortunately only increase your ability to inflict more harm to yourself or possibly others. If you have not addressed any underlying issues in your life, then having more money will only compound the problem. You have to focus on the heart of what is causing your discontentment or unhappiness, in totality, and not just concentrate on the money. Having more money won’t make any internal issues miraculously disappear. You must work to improve all areas of your life.

Spirituality is often regarded as synonymous with finding your purpose in life, but does not require that you exclusively focus on a purpose from a spiritual perspective. At the same time, it does not mean that you necessarily want to ignore it altogether either. However, finding your purpose is fundamental for achieving true riches. Everyone is unique, and, when it comes to spiritual beliefs, this is especially true. I am not here to endorse any one particular way of satisfying the spiritual nature of human beings, but when you are finding your purpose in life, remaining true to your spiritual beliefs is essential if you are to lead the most fulfilling life.
Speaking of purpose, incorporating the social aspect of it must also be taken into consideration. All of the aspects work together in helping you discover your true calling. You want to be sure that your social requirements are being met. You are the driving force behind what you get out of life, but don’t discard friends and family to help round out your experience and help you to enjoy the lighter side of life. Having a rich social life is an important part of a rich life .

You also want to make sure that you are nourishing your mind along the way. As all progress originates in the mind, it’s absolutely essential that you feed your mind. We all have room to grow, and, if you become too complacent, no matter how successful you have become, you are in danger of falling backward. The intellectual aspect of your wealth, a wealth of knowledge, is extremely important.
Your health is the final piece of the fulfillment puzzle. You want to work hard and be focused on what you are doing, but maintaining a healthy lifestyle will help keep you going. When you feel as though you don’t have the time to exercise, and you are stressed to the limit, even though you least feel like exercising, this is the time when you need it most. Make sure you make time to exercise. Eating healthy foods will provide the nourishment to help keep you going and stave off sickness and prevent chronic ailments. You have to take care of yourself.

Again, there is nothing wrong with wanting to have money. Achieving financial independence is a worthy goal, but in order to have a complete and fulfilling life, you want to make sure that you give due consideration to each of the five aspects and to how they relate to each other. Becoming rich in one’s life means much more than just having more money.

Realize that societal norms can train and push you into a preset mold that might not be best suited for you. You are a unique peg, and if you are trying to fit yourself into a predetermined, yet mismatched opening, you are limiting your own potential.
If you want to go your own way, you might have to just create your own space. In the process, though, society will pick up on what you are doing and start giving you unsolicited feedback. This is when you need to stay true to yourself and not just automatically accept the conventional wisdom. What might seem like the easy road at first due to societal norms might in fact be a major mistake if the end result is that you are incredibly unhappy and feel as if you are not tapping into your unlimited potential. It is just a matter of finding your passion and channeling your efforts toward your specific goals. As you pave your own path in life, consider the following suggestions.

•    Think Like a Child

Children have a natural curiosity. In fact, one of the most endearing traits of children is their innocence and purity. When a kid walks into a room, everything is new and filled with endless possibility. “What’s this? What’s that? How come?” Their viewpoint can be a valuable lesson.
As a child develops and moves on into adulthood, they are trained what to ask, what not to ask, what is socially acceptable, and what is not. This can have unintended consequences, because it can be enormously impairing for you if your subconscious mind prevents you from breaking out as you grow older. And while there are understandable reasons why some subjects might be off limits, and there is a certain level of decorum that should exist, the point is that from a very early age you are taught to keep your expectations in check, based on what is socially acceptable.
If you let this carry over into too many areas of your life and you fail to seek the answers that are important to you, it is possible that you will find yourself swept into the mainstream current that will limit your ability to make great things happen and challenge yourself, and society, to improve. Therefore, let the childlike curiosity within yourself emerge and explore the world and yourself from a new perspective.

•    Be Aware of Your Influences

The majority of people’s thinking is influenced by outside impulses. Radio, TV, newspapers, the Internet, politicians, friends, family, and colleagues inundate you with opinions and images on any manner of things regardless of having any knowledge about the subject or not. This can be dangerous and detrimental to your well-being and happiness, because your thinking is mostly made up of projections, pictures you have seen, or ideas you have read or heard from somewhere else.
The fact is that 95 percent of the pictures you see in your mind today are the very same images you had yesterday. It has been said that two percent of the population of the world actually thinks, three percent thinks they think, and 95 percent would rather die than think. Therefore, you need to think, and think critically, to move forward and accomplish great things in life.
Always remember that you can offer the world a specific and unique perspective, but you must be willing to go out on a limb. If you let your others in your life tell you, or convince you, to do or not to do something without investigating the matter thoroughly, you will be doing yourself and the world a disservice. The world needs your unique perspective. In fact, society depends on unique perspectives for innovation and growth.
To value someone else’s opinion is understandable and expected. However, you must be careful to realize the difference between incorporating other people’s opinions into the mix and just blindly adopting them as your own without proper vetting and consideration. Likewise, don’t fall into the trap of seeking and relying too much on the advice of like-minded people, which serves only to reinforce your preconceived notions. This does not do you any good, as you need perspective. These people are often no more knowledgeable than you are, and you need to expose yourself to a wide variety of information and seek out more experienced and expert advice.

•    Do Your Research

Sometimes the resistance you might experience from others is because you are forcing them to take a good, hard look at their own situation and circumstances. The idea of facing one’s own fears can lead to a subconscious effort to sabotage another’s desires. There might be legitimate concern for your well-being if you try to break out of the norm, but you also have to weigh the possibility that people are afraid of what it might mean for them if you succeed. That is why you need to always do your own research.
Your friends and family might have valid concerns, so you don’t want to go through life blind to the advice of those you hold dear, but you must recognize the difference between valid issues and those people who are having difficulty facing their own self-doubt. Sometimes it might be especially hard to root for someone if you are not happy in your own life, but if you are the one being skeptical, you have to ask yourself the question: “Am I really finding fault with what this person is trying to accomplish or am I just having a difficult time facing my own unhappiness?”

•    Choose Your Thoughts

The thoughts you choose – whether happy or sad, positive or negative – will eventually determine your results. All pain, pleasure, abundance, or limitations are either originated in your conscious mind or accepted uncritically from an outside source. Your thoughts express themselves through your feelings, your feelings decide your actions, and your actions determine your results; therefore, you must consider that your past or present results are not a result of your potential, which is infinite, but a result of your past or present thinking. To change your results, change your thinking.
If you want something and you feel it is in the best interest of you and your family, do not let others tell you that you cannot do something. Even though you might be tempted to take the path of least resistance and you might be facing difficult circumstances, if you believe in yourself and your dream, you can succeed. There will be risk involved for sure, and the path to a fulfilling life will not be easy, but you have the capability to realize your dreams.

Create the Life of Your Dreams

Remember that you have the ability to achieve great things. Do not let conventional wisdom be a deterrent if you have found your passion and believe that what you are doing will lead to a more fulfilling life. You have to be prepared to change your mindset and take action. When you do, your dreams will become reality.
Use your mind, use your creativity, revert back to your childhood curiosity, and realize that you can achieve great things and go where you want to go in life. Dream big, make your own informed decisions, take the necessary steps toward your goals, and beware of conventional wisdom.

JPA

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